Prevent spring poultry illness and disease with timely treatment.
Josh Wilder: Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. At Mother Earth News for 50 years and counting, we’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s natural resources while helping you conserve your financial resources in this podcast. We host conversations with experts in the fields of sustainability, homesteading, natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well wherever you are in a way that values both people and our Mother Earth.
Thanks to our sponsors today, Home Fresh Poultry Feeds. A superior quality of life begins with superior quality ingredients. Give your chickens the complete and balanced nutrition they need with Home Fresh Poultry Feeds. Home Fresh Poultry Feeds are made with just the right mix of vitamins, minerals, and nutrients for every stage of life.
You’ll find a starter, a grower, an extra egg layer, and one for better feathers. [00:01:00] Visit www.homefreshfeeds.com/friends now and get a coupon for 5 off. Provide chickens at any age with the right feed they need to stay healthy and happy. Visit www.homefreshfeeds.com/friends for more.
Alyssa Warner: Thank you for joining us. We hope you all enjoy our article written by Kenny Coogan, Preventing Spring Poultry Illnesses and Disease.
Kenny Coogan: Prevent spring poultry illness and disease with timely treatment. Written and read by me, Kenny Coogan.
Spring showers bring May flowers, but they could also cause problems to your flock. Here are some illnesses, diseases, and problems associated with springtime and treatments and preventions to keep your flock healthy when springtime has sprung.
Avian influenza
Recently, the avian influenza virus (H5N1) has approached record numbers in wild bird populations [00:02:00] and in poultry operations. The virus can live forever in frozen material and for long periods at moderate temperatures, making springtime a season to take extra safeguards. The virus can be spread through contaminated shoes, clothing, equipment, and through insects and rodents.
It also spreads directly from bird to bird contact. Symptoms include sudden death without any prior symptoms, lack of energy and appetite, a drop in egg production, swelling of the eyelids, comb, waddles, and shanks, gasping for air, nasal discharge, twisting of the head and neck, stumbling or falling, and diarrhea.
If you witness these symptoms, report them to your local veterinarian, agriculture extension office, or state veterinarian. Take biosecurity measures to protect your flock, especially as we enter spring and [00:03:00] wild birds begin migrating. Disinfecting clothing including shoes, hands, and equipment is essential.
Spring is a busy poultry show season for many of us. Isolating birds returning from shows and fairs for 30 days is recommended. Reducing the amount of visitors on your property is also advised. If visitors are necessary, example, veterinarians or service providers, set up a washing procedure for hands, boots, and their equipment in and out of your operation. Secure feed bins and waterers to prevent wildlife, (wild birds and rodents) contamination.
Egg bound chickens.
As we approach spring and day length increases, many of our birds will start to lay again. Ensure they are receiving proper nutrition to avoid egg laying problems. Hens deficient in calcium may become egg bound or lay misshapen eggs.
If you [00:04:00] see a hen straining or spending extra time in the nest box, feel and inspect the vent to see if you can detect the egg. If you can, apply a lubricant- like vegetable oil -and massage the area. We have had success with placing the hen in a warm bath for 15 to 20 minutes, which can relax the muscles and allow the egg to pass.
If the egg breaks internally, the hen will likely get an infection and a veterinarian should be consulted. Egg binding occurs more often in older hens.
Egg drop syndrome.
Another egg related disease is also known as egg drop, egg drop syndrome 76 or EDS-72. The disease was first seen in ducks and geese and it can affect all breeds of chickens, in particular brown egg layers and broiler breeds.
Infected birds will appear to be healthy but will lay thin shelled or shell less eggs. Although no successful [00:05:00] treatment exists, inducing molt will re establish healthy egg production.
Infectious Coryza
Seen in chickens, pheasants, and guinea fowl, Coryza is transmitted primarily by direct bird to bird contact. Exposure risk is increased at poultry shows, bird swaps, and fairs. Healthy looking birds remain carriers of the organisms and may shed them throughout their life. Coryza can be spread by airborne respiratory droplets and in contaminated feed and water. Symptoms include facial swelling, fowl smelling, thick, sticky nasal and eye discharge, and labored breathing.
Biosecurity measures and good sanitation practices are the best way to avoid infectious Coryza. Water soluble antibiotics can be used, but consult a veterinarian, as some aren’t FDA approved for [00:06:00] pullets.
Omphalitis
Omphalitis, also known as “navel ill” or “mushy chick disease”, is an infection that occurs during hatching or before the chick’s navel is healed.
Omphalitis only affects chickens and comes from dirty hatching eggs, eggs with poor quality shells, contaminated eggs exploding in the hatch area, or dirty brooders. Signs include dehydration, edema in the chick’s ventral area, external navel infections, and large, unabsorbed, yolk sacks.. There is no specific treatment for omphalitis, and most affected birds die within a few days. To prevent omphalitis, clean the hatching areas, nest boxes, and incubators.
Staphylococcus
Staphylococcus aureus is a soilborne infection that often is seen after storms and periods of wet weather when [00:07:00] birds are drinking from stagnant rain pools.
The infection comes in three stages, acute, chronic, and bumblefoot. Signs of septicemia, the acute form, include pain while moving, lack of appetite, and fever, and signs of the chronic form of Staphylococcus infection. Birds are lame and prefer to sit rather than stand. Bumblefoot is thought to be caused by injuries in which the localized chronic Staphylococcus infects the foot.
Novobiacin, Erythromycin, or penicillin can be used as treatments. Consult with your veterinarian on the proper dosage for your flock.
Parasites
External parasites can pose a major problem in poultry as the weather warms. Lice and mites are the most common, but ticks and fleas can cause serious illnesses as well.
The transmission of viruses [00:08:00] and disease are the main cause of concern. Although feather loss and scratching due to irritation are problematic as well. Shaft, fluff, and wing lice can infect ducks, turkeys, and guinea hens if they are housed close to infected chickens. One of the best pieces of knowledge I received was that adult lice rarely leave the host birds and therefore the treatment of the birds living quarters is of little value in controlling them.
For mites premise treatments, (living quarters), and bird treatments are both important as mites live much of their life off the host. Applying approved pesticides is necessary for your bird’s health, your local ecosystem, and it’s the ethical and lawful thing to do. Visit https://www.veterinaryentomology.org/vetpestx [00:09:00] to find out which pesticide is approved for your region. It includes a drop down menu for each state, the species you want to treat, the targeted pest, and application method.
Predators
In addition to baby poultry, springtime is when many predators like birds of prey, raccoons, coyotes, and wolves raise their young. With extra mouths to feed many predators look for easy meals. Ensure you securely protect your flock to avoid disappointment.
Kenny Coogan, that’s me, earned a master’s degree in global sustainability and co hosts the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast, which can be enjoyed at motherearthnews.com/podcast. I also created and host the TV show Florida’s Flora and Fauna with [00:10:00] conservationist Kenny Coogan, which will air in the summer of 2025.
To learn more about that program, visit https://floridasfloraandfauna.com.
Thanks for listening.
Josh Wilder: Today’s episode is brought to you by Home Fresh Poultry Feeds. A superior quality of life begins with superior quality ingredients. Give your chickens the complete and balanced nutrition they need with Home Fresh Poultry Feeds. Home Fresh Poultry Feeds are made with just the right mix of vitamins, minerals, and nutrients for every stage of life.
You’ll find a starter, a grower, an extra egg layer, and one for better feathers. Visit www.homefreshfeeds.com/friends now and get a coupon for five dollars off. Provide chickens at any age with the right feed they need to stay healthy and happy. Visit www.homefreshfeeds.com/friends for more.
Alyssa Warner: Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. [00:11:00] My name is Alyssa Warner and today we have Audra Trosper and Kenny Coogan talking about poultry illnesses.
Audra Trosper: Hi, I’m Audra Trosper. I’m the lead editor of Goat Journal Magazine, and I’m also an editor for Backyard Poultry, and I’ve kept chickens for over 20 years now.
And I’ve even tried out geese and ducks.
Kenny Coogan: I am Kenny Coogan, and I co host the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast one or two times a month, and I’ve been writing for Backyard Poultry for over 10 years, and now I also write for Goat Journal, Mother Earth News, Grit. And all of the other wonderful Ogden Publications.
And I’ve also been raising poultry for over 25 years.
Alyssa Warner: That’s a long time. My name is Alyssa Warner. I am our video and events producer and I’m the newbie among the group. I’ve had chickens for four years now, but I did grow up with quail for quail eggs.
Audra Trosper: I want to try quail one of these [00:12:00] days. I just have to convince my husband that we need quail.
Alyssa Warner: They were so fun and literally the best, I think, return on investment as far as if you’re regularly buying quail eggs. So cheap. All right. So let’s talk a little bit about preventing spring poultry illnesses.
Disinfectant Options for Your Flock
Alyssa Warner: So the first question I have is about disinfectants. I know a lot of our readers and our listeners out there use a lot of more natural cleaning products for their coops and their pools, but we are really concerned about infections in our poultry this year.
What are some simple disinfectants that I can use for my clothing, shoes, and equipment, and can I use the same natural cleaners that I’ve been using for regular cleaning?
Audra Trosper: Actually, you can. If you want, if you’re looking for biosecurity, like for tracking things in and out on your shoes or whatever, you can actually create a boot wash with a boot tray or any shallow plastic container big enough to put your [00:13:00] feet in.
Put like a welcome mat in the bottom and one of those AstroTurf ones or whatever. And you can either do one part bleach to four part water and fill that up just enough to cover that to make that mat nice and soft and wet. And you can hose off your boots. You always should take off the excess manure, dirt, and whatever.
Step into it, scrub your feet around in it. But you might want to go ahead and do another rinse afterwards because it can damage, footwear or whatever over time. Or you can do a vinegar. They say to use equal parts vinegar and water and you can use that as a disinfectant while vinegar is a well known disinfectant.
I don’t know how well it is against certain viruses like bird flu or something. That might be something to explore because I’m not really sure how far that goes. Of course you can use any of your equipment and stuff. I know when we were between flocks, we had moved our old girls out. We didn’t have the next hatching group in yet and I actually used Dawn dish soap and scrubbed down the interior of the coop really well.
Because you can [00:14:00] use it on birds, things like that, cats, whatever. So what we used when I worked as a groomer on cats, it came in with coral oil on them to get it off. But and I rinsed that out and then I actually sprayed everything down with vinegar after that and just let it sit there for the disinfectant properties of it.
But, so you can do that. Some people are using orange peel vinegar so that it smells better, doesn’t stink as bad. And I did see where one lady used just straight vinegar. on surfaces in the chicken house. So I’m like, Oh, that’ll probably do it. So there’s quite a bit. They do have some really heavy hitter commercial sanitizers that you can look into if you’re really worried about it, but you can I don’t know how I feel about spraying bleach around in the chicken house just because, but vinegar is not gonna hurt anybody.
Obviously don’t swallow it, drink it, something like that when it’s that concentration, but yeah.
Responding to an Egg Bound Hen
Alyssa Warner: So we talked a little bit about egg binding for spring poultry illnesses or poultry illnesses in general. And when you see, it doesn’t happen often, but when you see you have an egg bound hen, you have to work [00:15:00] fast. So we understand that your standard worm baths and vegetable oil are your acute responses.
What about preventative measures? What preventative measures are there for egg binding?
Audra Trosper: I had to look into this because I really haven’t dealt with a lot of egg binding and probably because I actually have a lot of the preventative measures actually already going on. Calcium really, it promotes the muscle contractions that they need in order to actually push the egg out.
And provides for a really strong shell, because if you don’t have a good strong shell, the egg tends to collapse, which causes a whole bunch of other problems, on top of what the hen’s already got going on, so you really need, you need her to have enough calcium to do both things. A complete layer feed will usually have enough calcium, but I don’t think it ever hurts to offer oyster shell.
I don’t think, I put that out there, sometimes my girls eat it, sometimes they don’t, maybe it’s the time of year, maybe they need more, maybe they’re, Going to produce more eggs. I don’t know, but sometimes I go after it, other times I completely figure if you want it, it’s [00:16:00] there. Obesity.
Your hens not getting enough exercise. That can be a real problem for them or if you’re feeding them like a bunch of what they call chicken candy, which is like their scratch grains and a lot of seeds and stuff rather than letting them get out and get their bugs and whatever else, that, that’s not really good for them.
If you want to give them treats stick with things like kale and cabbage or even herbs like parsley, cilantro, that kind of thing that’ll be really good for them just give them a well rounded nutrition is what you’re looking for. Lots of fun, give them plenty of nesting places. So they’re not like.
arguing over the nest box or standing in line holding on to the egg that can cause a problem too, waiting to get into the nest box. That doesn’t always work. I have had 10 nest boxes and 12 chickens before and they all fought over. So that’s up to them. At least provide it. Try to keep it a low stress.
Make sure they get lots of exercise. Those are the things you can do to help prevent it. [00:17:00] I don’t know. Sometimes I’ve read that it’s also genetic, so there may be, you can do everything right and still end up with an egg bound hen.
Alyssa Warner: Have either of you had a lot of experience with egg binding in your chickens?
Audra Trosper: Only once. We lost her.
Kenny Coogan: I’ve only had trouble when I was getting a lot of free food, a lot of second hand food from the local grocery stores. And I offered them so much on a Sunday, they didn’t eat any of their formulated, pelleted, proper diet. And then maybe one or two of them were egg bound because they just ate melons and lettuces and pumpkin.
Audra Trosper: It’s fine if you’re keeping like the kale and the cabbage which offer a good amount of nutrients, but if it’s other types of lettuces, maybe not.
Kenny Coogan: And there was also breads and all the sweets in there. So I had to end up giving them a warm bath. Sometimes you could put some like mineral [00:18:00] oil in their vent area.
And in a warm bath for 20 or 30 minutes, continually changing out the warm water, massaging them. And that did help, but you don’t want to be doing that too often. And especially if you have a large flock, you’re not even going to notice.
Alyssa Warner: I’ve only had to deal with it once and it was literally, I switched chicken feed and now I’m listening to you say make sure that you’re having like a high quality, balanced chicken feed and They didn’t have my feed and I didn’t want to drive to another store and I should have just driven to the next store.
Audra Trosper: Usually if you have some of your other feeds so you’re mixing it in so it’s that’s not all they’re getting is the lesser feed like if you’re changing brands or something it’s not so bad but Because I know sometimes I have a higher priced feed, but there’s a lower priced store brand feed that I will mix in with that.
Chickens can be fine with it. I don’t think I’d want to do, like, all the lower priced version. Some people do, and they do fine. There’s probably nothing wrong with it. I’m probably spoiling my hens for no good reason, but it makes me feel better.
Alyssa Warner: You spoil them because [00:19:00] you love them.
Audra Trosper: I have 35 chickens and every single one has a name.
Methods for Treating Parasites
Alyssa Warner: Awesome. Kenny, when we’re dealing with things like external parasites and mites and lice what are the best methods for creating a safe and effective dust bath for my chickens with, is there a way to use like natural materials or is there a better way to do it?
Kenny Coogan: We’re talking about ectoparasites, which are on the outside of the bird compared to endoparasites, which are on the inside. And in the article, Preventing Spring Poultry Illness, I write, one of the best pieces of knowledge I received was that adult lice rarely leave the bird, and therefore the treatment of the bird’s living quarters is of little value in controlling them.
Lice are usually under the feathers and also near the vent. And when I was a middle schooler, my favorite thing was going to the county fair and I was working the poultry barn. And my job [00:20:00] was to give the daily, how to give a chicken a bath. Presentation and I did it for show birds, but it’s also a good way to get rid of the lice.
You can have a 3 bucket method where they’re all buckets of warm water. The 1st, 1 has soapy water like a normal dish detergent. The 2nd bucket has a splash of apple cider vinegar to put the soap and the 3rd has just pure water to wash everything off. That’s a good way to get your birds ready for a show, but it’s also a good way to manually remove the lice.
And although the adult lice aren’t hanging out in the coop area because they’re spending most of their life cycle on the bird, this is still a best practice to return the birds to a clean environment. And just a reminder that the lice are coming from other birds, which include poultry, but it also includes wild birds, squirrels, rodents.
Anything that’s in the environment, [00:21:00] they’re a ubiquitous pest, especially in warm environments or in the summertime. And then on the opposite end, mites do live in the environment, and cleaning the living quarters and directly treating the birds are both important, as mites live much of their life off the host.
So they, if you’re only treating the bird, if you’re only washing the bird, that’s not going to help because the mites are in the habitat.
Audra Trosper: However, they won’t get them from squirrels, because mice are species specific, not mice, lice are species specific, so they won’t get the lice from the squirrels, unless the squirrels are tracking the lice from the wild birds, which is possible because they all live in the trees together.
Kenny Coogan: So many. Yeah, so there’s a lot of different species. Are you saying, you mean mammal lice versus avian lice?
Audra Trosper: No, even mammal lice. The lice that you have on your goats are not going to get on your head. They’re [00:22:00] species specific.
Which is really good when you have, when you’ve been milking goats for two months and you got one from a really crappy situation that you wouldn’t have bothered to get over there because it’s horrible. And you’ve been milking her for two months and it finally got Spring enough that you could, give her a shave down and remove the fur only to find out she’s crawling with lice and you’ve been resting your head against her flank the entire time when you’re milking?
Yeah, no, you won’t get lice from your goats.
Kenny Coogan: But I think the extension agent that I read was saying that poultry can get lice from wild birds.
Audra Trosper: Yeah, wild birds. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. I was saying squirrels. The squirrels probably won’t. Now, that doesn’t say that squirrels don’t track through where, wild birds are, maybe pick up some and transfer them to your pen, because that is, they move fast, it’s possible.
I could see that happening.
Kenny Coogan: Because I also got the squirrel fact from the extension agent. So I wasn’t just coming up [00:23:00] with a wild animal. They specifically said I know,
Audra Trosper: If your birds have lice, they’re not going to give them to you. Because, they’re going to crawl on you, but they’re not, a lot of mites or even species specifics, like You get mites on your gerbils from the bedding, or sometimes they only have pet gerbils for your kids.
Your kids are only going to get bit from them if you were, there’s not enough gerbil there to keep them happy. And once you remove the gerbil, you remove the mite problem, because they need that. Although they do transfer back and forth between gerbils and mice. A rhoda thing there.
Kenny Coogan: Yeah, I also read that although you might feel itchy after reading about this, you cannot get poultry lice.
Audra Trosper: Yep, no, you can’t.
Alyssa Warner: You can’t feel just itchy just looking at a licey animal, but that doesn’t mean, or a lousy animal,
Audra Trosper: but that doesn’t mean. Yeah, it’s bad we call them lousy. Lousy. Licey.
Alyssa Warner: I have a question, Kenny. I have a follow up question. What do you do with a wet chicken? [00:24:00] How do you dry them?
Kenny Coogan: Like a hairdryer?
So for poultry shows, you should not use a hairdryer because then the feathers will start graying and getting fluffy and they’ll have things that look like silky chickens that are not supposed to be silky chickens. So you can just use a towel. Dab them off.
Audra Trosper: Really? How long does it take them to dry? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it completely soaking wet chicken.
Kenny Coogan: Yeah, they do become completely wet and then you can just pat them down and then with a low powered fan and a towel, you can just dry them off and they need to dry up within an hour and you also need to do this during the warmer months because you don’t want them to get cold. But most big poultry shows are in the warmer time and then people who are like really serious and they’re traveling to like the National Ohio poultry show in [00:25:00] February are eating their birds at home in their barns, cereal leave preparing hundreds of them or tens of them, putting them in all their little show pens and getting them ready for transport.
Alyssa Warner: Those chickens are very cute in their little show pens.
Kenny Coogan: Okay, so I think we talked about lice. We can’t get lice, but birds can transfer lice to our poultry. And then mites are living in the environment a lot. And according to another extension expert, they only know of one study that found a slight decrease in the number of external parasites when using diatomaceous earth in few strains of commercial laying hens.
So the extension expert says, therefore, we should take its perceived effectiveness with a grain of salt, as most diatomaceous earth, or [00:26:00] it’s also known as DE, those results are more anecdotal than scientific. And then we’ve also read that, in addition to the efficacy of DE not maybe being that strong, That some people have also claimed that their chickens have experienced respiratory dangers associated with using it around poultry and in closed areas.
That is what we have read where we don’t believe that DE is the best method for providing poultry with a dust bath. to kill mites or lice. But one solid resource is veterinaryentomology.org, and it’s a free website. You can go there and you can, it’s a drop down menu and you can type in pesticide you have, or you could talk about the pest you have, the state you’re in, the species you want to treat, which includes poultry and all the different types of [00:27:00] livestock.
And then it will tell you what you are legally and not legally allowed to apply to get that targeted pest and the type of application method you should be using. And we recommend that you always use. chemicals as needed and as necessary to minimize the effect on the environment while keeping your birds healthy.
Elector PSP and detergents that have pyrethrin or sulfur are commonly suggested on that website. And as always, you should contact your poultry veterinarian. who you have a good working relationship with and who have seen your birds in the past year and they will be happy to tell you what you can legally use.
Alyssa Warner: And we do have a great episode of the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast about making sure you have a good working relationship with your [00:28:00] animal veterinarian, your livestock veterinarian.
Audra Trosper: If you have somebody around you who treats chickens, not everybody does. I don’t. There’s nobody else. They’re chickens.
If there’s something wrong with one, you probably have 50 more. So what? Put that one down. There’s just not a lot of people out here who will treat them. They just, it’s like goats. A lot of people really struggle to find a veterinarian that will treat goats. They just don’t. For some reason, they’re seen as a throwaway animal rather than something that deserves veterinary care as much as anything else.
Hard Decisions When Bird Flu Reaches Your Birds
Kenny Coogan: Yeah, in that podcast episode, we asked all three veterinarians was it possible to find a poultry vet in your area? And they said that if you want to become a. Livestock veterinarian, there’s lots of job opportunities because the need is there, but Alyssa in the very beginning was mentioning that, we are concerned about avian influenza, so we don’t want to just let one chicken die when you have 50 [00:29:00] others because that’s going to spread to the whole flock, so we need to be on top of these things, and that’s why, even if your poultry vet lives 50 miles away, 100 miles away, If you have a working relationship with them, a lot of times they’ll do like the video conference calls many states.
You’re also able to submit your dead chicken for results for free because they don’t want somebody else in your state to have to call 20, 000 chickens because of a outbreak.
Audra Trosper: Exactly. No, I wasn’t suggesting you should just let one die. I’m just saying it’s hard to find a vet that will treat them because it’s just.
That seems to be the attitude sometimes, which is frustrating.
Kenny Coogan: And the other part is that the chicken costs 2, or 3. So people say, why do I need to invest 50 for a house call?
Audra Trosper: Because sometimes if you’re having a problem, you may lose your whole flock, and then you’ve lost a lot. Plus if they’re pets, [00:30:00] like mine, then, sometimes it’s about more than the financial value of the chicken.
They have value beyond their financial contribution.
Preventing Poultry Predation
Alyssa Warner: Since we’re on a slightly somber topic already, I have sad news to report. I lost one of my beautiful gold blinded hens to a hawk the other day. It was very, extremely sad. It’s my first loss in four years though to, I’m sorry, excuse me, my second loss in four years to predation that wasn’t related to a local animal that had gotten loose.
Which I think is pretty good for free range chickens.
Kenny Coogan: You say local, do you mean domestic?
Alyssa Warner: Domestic dog, yeah. Who’s having a good time.
Kenny Coogan: Yep.
Alyssa Warner: Yeah but beyond securing my coop what are some effective and humane strategies for deterring predators like raccoons or birds of prey during the spring breeding season?
Kenny Coogan: Yeah, so some people suggest having like specific plants or fencing [00:31:00] designs or behavioral techniques. And in April, we’re going to have an entire podcast with Backyard Poultry writer Aaron Snyder. And that episode is called Identifying and Preventing Poultry Predators. And just like Alyssa, I have lost nine out of 11 birds to domestic dogs in one day.
And then a year later, like basically the anniversary of that, I lost an entire flock of duck to raccoons. Between the hours of 10 a. m. and 2 p. m., which is not when raccoons are supposed to be active and I live in the city limits, and predators are abundant, and one of the problems is we’ve domesticated all of these animals to be fat, chubby, slow moving, curious, they walk up to things to see what’s going on, and many of the birds have also [00:32:00] lost Many of the poultry have lost their ability to fly, so we do need to keep them safe and secure.
One thing that Erin kept saying in the episode, which almost became a joke, was when she was talking about diurnal predators, nocturnal predators from the land, the water, the air. Every segment she ended with, Do not free range. Do not free range. Do not free range. And everybody loves that beautiful view of chickens.
Common meadow, free ranging, but in reality it’s very tricky to keep them safe. Electric fences are good for some predators, but not, aerial predators. So keeping them in like a chicken tractor or a run is probably the best thing to do. Make sure you have a sturdy roof. Removing perches near the coop or the run where hawks and owls can sit.
And just like perch and pounce is also recommended. And I love [00:33:00] pigeons and I grew up raising hundreds of homing pigeons and tumbler pigeons, and that was another thing, when you have that type of, when you have a pigeon coop, you also need to be far away from trees or forests, so when they’re coming home, the hawks aren’t waiting for them.
We’ve also seen people recommend like the wacky, wavy, inflatable men that you see at the car dealers, and I just don’t think that’s going to deter predators. For the long term, it might do it in the beginning positive, those predators are just going to be habituated to those patterns of them going up and down and in the end, they’re just going to be focusing on hunting your little chubby birds that are slow moving and they’re just going to ignore that huge inflatable.
Audra Trosper: I let mine out for a little bit in the evening, just before bed, they get an hour so it’s supervised. We’re out there with them. [00:34:00] I haven’t lost any to. Predation in a while. The last time we really had a big loss was actually my own dogs who got in trouble and then never, ever, it was, she was a border collie and she was so upset that we were upset with her.
She never touched a chicken again after that. She was just like, never mind.
Kenny Coogan: Yeah. And that in that podcast episode, I talked about a friend who had friends just visit her for a day. From Alaska, and they said, Oh, our dogs are great with chickens, and then they go into the kitchen just for a few minutes and her friend’s dogs killed like her beloved 14 year old chicken.
Yeah, I think another. So that’s a, that’s one aspect of a dog but the opposite aspect of a dog is you could have a livestock guardian dog, both are great options. And a friend of mine just [00:35:00] had a pet dog, like a golden retriever, who they would let out, and that dog urine was enough to deter coyotes, and maybe some other predators for their rabbits and their outdoor guinea pigs that just lived in a hutch without a roof, and those animals were safe for eight or nine years.
For as long as that, the golden retriever was around and then they had a euthanized the golden retriever due to age and a week after they euthanized the dog, some type of predator came in and killed all the rabbits and the guinea pigs. They knew that friendly pet dog wasn’t around, even though the dog was an indoor dog.
And wasn’t necessarily designed to be guardian dog.
Alyssa Warner: Yeah, just having a deterrent is nice sometimes. We have, we’ve got a great Pyrenees. And he does He is not like a farm trained Great Pyrenees, he grew up in my house in the city. But he’s got such a low prey [00:36:00] drive even the chickens behave a little closer to a city pigeon around him, where unless he’s come into play, they really don’t, they don’t care that he’s there.
And he’s scared of our rooster, who is the actual guardian of our chickens. We’ve had great success and we’re so lucky that our neighbors are okay. They’re all retired farmers retired Kansas farmers. And our rooster is. I think part of why we have such low predation is because we have him always watching and we do also have a really dense population of songbirds and squirrels that patrol the trees and scream and chase hawks.
Audra Trosper: That’s one thing we have is we have a lot of blue jays. And they are very quick to announce when there is a problem. And we have squirrels. And interestingly enough, we talked about how some of our chickens tend to be more curious and go up to things. But there’s a big stray cat. He’s not stray.
I’m pretty sure he belongs to somebody. He’s huge. And I named him Socks, even though he’s not mine, but he comes to my yard. We’re apparently part of his territory. [00:37:00] So he comes through the yard, and one of the first times the girls were out getting to run around after they got big enough to come out of the, not be little chickens anymore.
They were almost laying size. He came into the yard on his nightly, his evening patrol, and one of my Easter Eggers, she started, she did the sound of the alarm, and everybody who? And then she came running to get me, and made me follow her. Mom, I swear, there’s a critter in the yard. But once I saw that it was Socks, I was like, It’s fine.
It’s just Socks. You’re bigger than him. Don’t worry about it. And now they ignore him when he comes in the yard. But yeah, at first she was like, Oh my gosh! Something in the yard! Some of them do announce that there’s a problem. I’m always keeping an eye out in the treetops just to make sure that none of the hawks
Alyssa Warner: The hawks sit on my house roof.
There’s nothing I can do about that.
Audra Trosper: We have plenty of hawks, but I think it’s because we’re such a small town, surrounded by so much, land, ranch land and farmland out here that there’s [00:38:00] easier pickings outside of town,
Kenny Coogan: Yeah, that mobbing behavior of the songbirds and the blue jays. And definitely alert your poultry to take shelter.
Audra Trosper: It really does. And it’s interesting because, I don’t know, I don’t know if the chickens can speak Blue Jay or vice versa, but they definitely know that there’s something coming, watch out.
Alert. They pick right up on that, even though they didn’t have any older chickens to tell them. Yeah, we got something you can listen to.
Alyssa Warner: Grackles? Is that what you call them? I did not grow up with that.
Audra Trosper: We call them Star Wars birds. Because they sound like Star Wars.
Alyssa Warner: They seem to be the mina birds — we have minas in Hawaii — of Kansas.
Audra Trosper: Where I’m at now, if I go up to Great Bend, 30 miles north of me, there’s tons of those. But here where I’m at, it’s all blue jays. Blue jays and doves are our biggest population out there.
Kenny Coogan: I’ll just end for deterring predators. Motion detectors that create light or water dispersals, [00:39:00] they could work, but I still think that predators have evolved for a very long time and we’re domesticating poultry. If a predator is hungry enough.
Alyssa Warner: So it sounds like we want to make sure that we’re proactive about domesticated dogs. It sounds like we want to make sure that we are removing the opportunity for predators.
And it sounds like we want to make sure that we’re not free ranging our birds,
Audra Trosper: Not without supervision, anyway.
Alyssa Warner: I’m probably going to continue free ranging my birds. They eat all the bad bugs around my house and I like that and my rooster takes good care of them.
Kenny Coogan: The other thing about free ranging is I used to have a lot of bantams, and after a bunch of hawks got them, I said, okay, no more, and then I started getting 10 and 12 pound birds.
My neighbor even saw a hawk pick up like a 10 pound chicken, maybe 3 feet off the ground. Flew with it, three feet and then [00:40:00] dropped it because they couldn’t handle that.
Audra Trosper: Yeah, all of my birds are big ladies.
Alyssa Warner: Oh, my birds are small, but I thought it was interesting. I could see where the hawk had killed the bird because of all of the feathers.
But I think it was literally the songbirds because I saw it being chased off. It didn’t have a chance to really eat but it didn’t take the chicken very far. It had only gone three feet, and then the blue jays came.
Kenny Coogan: I’ve also had a hawk fly into the chicken coop wire and grab a bird through the wire, kill it, and then not be able to eat it.
Which is even maybe sadder than I just had a dead bird.
Alyssa Warner: I was way more frustrated when my animals were killed by a domestic dog because that was just a bored dog who someone wasn’t watching Versus like I’ve had a chicken totally stripped totally eaten totally stolen and I found her And, you thank your bird for all that it’s given you, and you dispose of the body so that it doesn’t spread any disease, but it [00:41:00] fed something.
I didn’t feel quite as bad. I wasn’t angry.
Audra Trosper: Yeah, that, that wild animal just trying to eat is a totally different ballgame than just the bored neighbor dog that is allowed to run loose.
Kenny Coogan: In that April podcast where we talk about poultry predators and how to prevent them, we do mention how you can identify if your bird was attacked by an aerial predator or a dog or a raccoon or an opossum or a skunk or a snake.
We go through the list or an alligator or a turtle…
Alyssa Warner: Or a turtle?!
Kenny Coogan: Oh yeah. Snapping turtles love baby ducks or swans. In this one episode, you can also hear about snapping turtles or large turtles are the demise of cygnets.
Alyssa Warner: I’m going to be looking forward to that one now. That sounds like quite a list.
Audra Trosper: It is rather extensive.
Alyssa Warner: Awesome.
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Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. To listen to more podcasts and get connected on our social media, visit www.motherearthnews.com/podcast. You can also email us at podcast@ogdenpubs.com with any questions or suggestions. Our podcast production team includes Kenny Coogan, Alyssa Warner, and myself, Josh Wilder.
Music for this episode is the [00:43:00] song Hustle by Kevin MacLeod. The Mother Earth News and Friends podcast is a production of Ogden Publications.
